Money gap could transform college sports

As shocking as this seems, this week marks the official start of the college football season, with some games kicking off as early as Thursday night.

And, as has been the case for at least the last few seasons, the really interesting storylines are taking place off the field. Here’s one of them: This could be the season in which the steadily growing divide between the “haves” and the “have-nots” among college athletics programs becomes even more obvious.

The divide has been growing for some time, and the primary reason driving the money race in college athletics should be relatively obvious: Although having an athletics program that spends more than $100 million a year doesn’t guarantee championships (and the financial rewards that go along with those), it doesn’t hurt.

According to a recent analysis by USA Today using data from 2013, 12 public universities broke that $100 million spending mark, including perennial powerhouses such as Alabama and Ohio State.

(If you’re curious about spending in the Pacific-12 Conference, there’s no real surprise: The University of Oregon spent $95 million to lead all Pac-12 public schools. Oregon State University spent $64.2 million; only Washington State and Utah spent less. The USA Today analysis did not include private schools such as Stanford and the University of Southern California, which are not required to provide the data, but we’d guess that their spending is closer to the Ducks’ level than the Beavers’.)

In any event, the gap between the richest and poorest college athletics departments is expected to only grow larger this year. In particular, the nation’s five biggest conferences likely will be putting some distance between themselves and their competitors.

Here’s part of the reason why: The NCAA, the organization that purportedly governs college sports, has approved a measure that gives more autonomy to those five conferences — the Pac-12, the Southeastern Conference, the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big Ten and the Big 12. A recent story in The New York Times suggested that the five conferences will take advantage of the increased autonomy to increase spending on sports.

Now, you can argue that successful sports programs help to build strong universities by serving as a point of introduction to those schools, and we agree with that — to a point. But as universities feel forced to spend more to field competitive sports teams, it could increase the financial pressures they face. In fact, as it stands now, only 20 college athletic programs in the NCAA’s Division I generate enough money to cover their expenses.

This year’s college football season will end with four teams earning invitations to a national championship playoff. It’s likely that all four of those teams will come from those five powerful conferences — additional evidence of a growing divide that threatens to remake the landscape of college sports.

— Albany Democrat-Herald, Aug. 25

Karuks have a head start on casino plans

The Karuk Tribe in Northern California may still be at least a year away from opening a casino in Yreka, but the they are years ahead of the Coquilles, who want to open a smaller casino in Medford. If the Karuks’ casino does open, it would likely lure gamblers from Southern Oregon looking for a full-fledged casino experience.

The Karuk tribe, headquarted in Happy Camp, is California’s second largest. The tribe has been working with federal officials for more than 10 years to gain approval for its plans.

California Gov. Jerry Brown approved a compact between the state and the tribe last December. Last week, the Californian State Senate approved the compact as well.

The tribe’s website says it hoped to break ground in May of this year, with completion expected in the fall of 2015. They’ve missed that deadline, but the state approval was a big hurdle.

Plans call for two phases, but when all is said and done, the casino will encompass 56,000 square feet of gaming space, a hotel and two restaurants. The casino will include up to 1,500 slot machines as well as table games.

That’s a sharp contrast with the Coquilles’ plans for a Class III Medford casino with 600 machines and no hotel. In addition to Gov. John Kitzhaber’s stated opposition to the Medford casino proposal, it also has generated strong opposition from city leaders, who planned a trip to Washington, D.C., to meet with the Department of the Interior Office of Indian Gaming and express their concerns.

The Karuks also do not face opposition from the Cow Creek tribe, which operates the Seven Feathers casino in Canyonville. The Cow Creeks consider the Yreka proposal to be on Karuk aboriginal land, and therefore a legitimate tribal enterprise. They argue that the Coquilles’ aboriginal land is in Coos Bay, not Jackson County.

If the Coquilles do eventually win federal and state approval for their Medford casino proposal, which is a long shot, they will in all likelihood be bracketed on the north and the south by established, full-fledged casino operations. For them, that means that regulatory success is no guarantee of financial success.